How To Be Happy At Work

“The way we’re working isn’t working,” wrote Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath in a recent New York Times article entitled “Why You Hate Work.” The article goes on to tell the sadly familiar tale of today’s typical workplace—lack of engagement in what people do, massive impediments to doing their work well, little appreciation for what they have done, all leading to the suspicion what they do at work makes no difference anyway. “For most of us,” the authors conclude, “work is a depleting, dispiriting experience.”

The authors—both management consultants—report that “more and more companies are taking up this challenge” of dealing with workplace disengagement. They describe a change program at the Albermarle Corporation [ALB], a multi-billion-dollar chemical company, that claims to have done so.

“He began by building breaks into his days—taking a walk around the block—and being more fully focused and present during time with his family. He now sets aside at least one morning on his calendar every week for reflection and thinking longer term. He has also made it a practice to send out handwritten notes of appreciation to people inside and outside the company.

“Mr. Kissam has also championed a comprehensive rethinking of his organization’s practices around meetings, email, flexible work arrangements, conflict resolution and recognition. By the end of 2014 more than 1,000 of his leaders and managers will have gone through a program aimed at helping them more skillfully meet their own needs, and the needs of those they oversee.

“'I can already see it’s working,' Mr. Kissam the chief executive of Albermarle told the authors. 'We’re trusting them to do their jobs rather than telling them what to do, and then we’re appreciating them for their efforts. We’re also on the right path financially. A year from now it’s going to show up in our profitability.'”

Missing the main point: purpose

The managerial steps taken at Albermarle however don’t entirely correspond to the authors’ own diagnosis of the problem of dispiriting workplaces. Thus the authors conducted a study, in partnership with Harvard Business Review, to examine the drivers of worker engagement. The study identified four such drivers:

Physical needs: the physical opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work;

Recognition: the need to feel valued and appreciated for contributions;

Autonomy: the need to be able to focus in a sustained way and define and where to work: and

Purpose: the spiritual need to feel connected to some kind of higher purpose at work.

The survey found that the most important of these needs is the last: purpose. “Employees who derive meaning and significance from their work were more than three times as likely to stay with their organizations—the highest single impact of any variable in our survey. These employees also reported 1.7 times higher job satisfaction and they were 1.4 times more engaged at work.”

Yet the changes described at Albemarle do little if anything to do with the firm’s purpose. The CEO is still talking about the firm’s purpose as “getting on the right path financially,” something that will “show up in our profitability.” Talking about the purpose of the firm in purely financial terms is a quick way to demotivate employees.

The CEO might have listened to Simon Sinek and started with the question, why? Why does Albemarle even exist? Is it to “be a company that is on the right path financially” and “showing profitability”? Or is it a firm obsessed with delighting its customers with remarkable products and services?

The question is particularly relevant in the case of Albemarle, given on the one hand its questionable earlier history on environmental issues, and on the other, its more recent efforts to establish itself as a major player in the fast growing market of biofuels.

In assuming that the purpose of a firm is to make money, Albemarle’s CEO is not alone. According to a recent report from the Aspen Institute, the conventional wisdom in the United States today is that the goal of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value, even though Jack Welch has called this “the dumbest idea in the world.”

By talking of the purpose of a firm in purely financial terms, executives miss an opportunity to create meaning and purpose for their workers. Ironically by not focusing the firm on delighting customers, they also miss a huge opportunity to “get on the right path financially.” That’s because delighting the customer is not just profitable. It’s hugely profitable.

Clarifying the ingredients of workplace satisfaction

The goal of delighting customers also sheds light on the true meaning of employee recognition. Giving employees a clear line of sight as to how the work is impacting the ultimate customer and whether those customer is being delighted is inherently more motivating for employees than a pat on the back from the boss. Recognition from a boss is a poor proxy for real customer feedback, since the recognition may be mistaken or arbitrary, and hence a further source of workplace frustration.

That's one of the key current problems at IBM, for instance, where although the top management pays lip service to responding to customers, the actual decisions make clear that the primary drivers are cutting costs and increasing earnings per share. In such a situation, talk about delighting customers only elicits cynicism.

The need for a radical transformation in management

Thus the Albemarle experience can hardly be regarded as a success when it doesn’t deal with the root cause of workplace disengagement. In fact, it’s symptomatic of a deeper malaise of management theory and practice. Better practices in terms of autonomy and recognition will not by themselves resolve the problem of workplace dissatisfaction, unless the purpose of the firm becomes more uplifting.

Limiting the length of meetings, mandating response times on emails, or creating fitness facilities or nap rooms are not bad things in themselves, but they are baby steps, in comparison with the longer and more difficult journey of management transformation that lies ahead.

Focusing a firm on delighting customers means a more fundamental shift in how leaders and managers think, speak and act in the workplace. It entails a different set of goals, habits, values, attitudes and beliefs. It’s not any secret as to what’s involved. More than a score of books have been written about it.

Work alone won’t make you happy

Those who really want to do something about improving workplace happiness might also draw on significant insights about happiness from the field of psychology, such as Jonathan Haidt's book, The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt summarizes a large amount of recent research on happiness with the formula:

H =S + C + V

where

“H” is happiness;

“S” is the “setpoint” or basic disposition to greater or lesser happiness, which varies considerably from individual to individual;

“C” is the amount of happiness generated by the conditions in which the individuals find themselves; and

“V” is the amount of happiness generated by the voluntary activities that individuals undertake themselves.

The biggest part of the “conditions” (C) for happiness, says Haidt, are social relationships. “No man, woman, or child is an island. We are ultra-social creatures, and we can’t be happy without having friends and secure attachments to other people.” We may find the people with whom to have these relationships at work, but it’s the relationships, not the work that is critical for happiness. We need to be realistic about what the workplace by itself can, and cannot, do. Even inspiring workplaces are not sufficient for true happiness.

The second most important part of the conditions (C) for happiness is “having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement. In the modern world, people can find goals and flow in many settings, but most people find most of their flow at work.”

Turning work into a calling

If the conditions at your workplace are miserable, you may be starting with negative conditions (C) for happiness. Can you overcome these bad conditions with positive voluntary efforts? Haidt suggests that you can, by turning work into a calling.

“Research finds that most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling. If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies…

"If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige. The pursuit of these goals often energizes you, and you sometimes take work home with you because you want to get the job done properly. Yet, at times, you wonder why you work so hard. You might occasionally see your work as a rat race where people are competing for the sake of competing.

"If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling—you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to “quitting time” nor feel the desire to shout, 'Thank God it’s Friday!' You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy.”

Haidt goes on to quote Amy Wrzesniewski, a psychologist at Yale School of Management: “Work itself is but what you deem it.” Wrzesniewski finds “all three orientations represented in almost every occupation she has examined. In a study of hospital workers, for example, she found that the janitors who cleaned bed pans and mopped up vomit—perhaps the lowest-ranking job in a hospital—sometimes saw themselves as part of a team whose goal was to heal people.”

Even without better management, Haidt suggests that most people can get more satisfaction from their work.

“The first step is to know your strengths. Take the strengths test and then choose work that allows you to use your strengths every day, thereby giving yourself at least scattered moments of flow. If you are stuck in a job that doesn’t match your strengths, recast and reframe your job so that it does…

“If you can engage your strengths, you’ll find more gratification in work; if you find gratification, you’ll shift into a more positive, approach-oriented mindset; and in such a mindset it will be easier for you to see the bigger picture—the contribution you are making to a larger enterprise—within which your job might turn into a calling. Work at its best, then, is about connection, engagement, and commitment.”

Change your work or your workplace?

The issue of happiness at work is of widespread interest. My article, “The Ten Happiest Jobs” now has close to a million page-views, in part because the happiest jobs are not the ones people expect: clergy, firefighters, physical therapists, authors, teachers, artists, psychologists, financial services sales agents, and engineers. By contrast, the "unhappiest jobs" include jobs where the conventional wisdom would least expect unhappiness: managers. The message is clear: climbing up the corporate ladder of a hierarchical bureaucracy is not the path to happiness.

Bottom line: if you are interested in pursuing happiness in a workplace that is not engaging you and the management is actively thwarting your own efforts to generate purpose in your work, maybe it’s time to look around for a different workplace?

My new book, "The Age of Agile" was published by HarperCollins in 2018. I consult with organizations around the world on leadership, innovation, management and business narrative. For many years I worked at the World Bank, where I held many management positions, including di...